The invention relates to a labeling station in a machine for labeling objects, especially bottles, having at least one gluing segment which is mounted on a driven, revolving carrier, whose axis of rotation is situated between the center of curvature of its especially cylindrically curved pickup surface and the said pickup surface, and whose rotational speed is accelerated and retarded for the purpose of rolling its pickup surface on the surface of a rotating gripper cylinder.
In a known labeling station of this kind, the carrier and gripper cylinder rotate in opposite directions, while their circumferential speeds are approximately equal. To enable a rolling of the gluing segment on the gripper of these geometrical conditions and these conditions of movement, the radius of curvature of the pickup surface of each glue segment is equal to the radius of the circle defined by the individual stations of the labeling machine, such as the label stack, the gripper cylinder, and the gluing roller. In order to make possible a rolling of the gluing segment on the gripper cylinder under these geometrical conditions and these conditions of movement, the gluing segment which is controlledly swung back and forth is halted in the middle position upon passing the gripper cylinder, in which its pickup surface coincides with the circumference of the glue segment carrier. A disadvantage of this labeling station is that the division of the gluing segment carrier must coincide with that of the labeling cylinder (German Offenlegungsschrift No. 1,486,135).
According to my copending U.S. application Ser. No. 754,869 now abandoned which is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 597,276 now abandoned, a more optimum division of the glue segment carrier can be achieved if the gluing segment carrier and the gripper cylinder have the same sense of rotation and the glue segment or segments rotate in the opposite sense. In this system it is not necessary that the division of the gluing segment carrier be identical with that of the gripper cylinder. In the invention, it is possible with a single gluing segment to transfer the labels to a labeling cylinder of fourfold division. The central idea of the above copending application is based on the knowledge that, through the rotation of the gluing segments in the sense opposite that of the glue segment carrier, the rotatory movement of the gluing segment carrier can be overcompensated for the purpose of arriving at a complete rolling action on the gripping cylinder.
Since the gluing segment or segments rotate about their axes, the rotatory movement only being accelerated and retarded by a cam-controlled drive, it is possible with the labeling station of the principal patent to achieve very high outputs.